The
rathaus in 1933 and today. During the war, Speyer was the site of one
of the first encounters between pilots and UFOs, or Foo Fighters as they
were called at the time:

In
an encounter on November 27, 1944 over Speyer, pilots Henry Giblin and
Walter Cleary
reported a large orange light flying at 250 mph about 1,500 feet above
their fighter. The
radar station in the sector replied that there was nothing else there.
Nevertheless, a
subsequent malfunction in the plane's radar system forced it to return
to base. An official
report was made - the first of its kind - which resulted in many jokes
at the pilots' expense. After the 27 November encounter, pilots who saw
the Foo Fighters decided not to
include them in their flight reports.

Alan Baker Invisible Eagle -The History of Nazi Occultism

Standing in front of the Altpörtel, and as it appeared in 1939- the postwar changes are evident in this comparison.

Einst und jetzt...

Trier (Rhineland-Palatinate)

Hitler being driven down Kölner Straße in May, 1939. The Kemmelkarne on the Petrisberg, set up by the Nazis in 1938, became a notorious prison camp during the war- STALAG XII- in which mainly French prisoners of war were accommodated. The synagogue was desecrated by the Nazis in the Reichspogromnacht in 1938 and completely destroyed by a bomb attack in 1944. On June 16, 1936 the city of Trier signed a contract with the German Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft, Bildung und Volksbildung to build a teacher training centre. Trier thus became again a university town after 138 years. The Teacher Training Centre was opened in the summer of 1936 with the presence of Reich Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust, with a large, two-day celebration and a strong Nazi celebration. The buildings erected for the Teacher Training Centre on the Schneidershof are largely preserved and today the buildings J, K, L, O, T (Gymnasium) and today's nursery of the Trier University of Applied Sciences remain. From September 1944 onwards, the city was not far from the front line, and was shot almost daily by American artillery. In December 1944, there were three heavy air raids on the Trier allies. On December 19, 30 British Lancaster bombers dropped 136 tons of explosive bombs across the city. Two days later on December 21, 1944, around 14:35, 94 of Lancaster bombers and 47 American bombers were dropped 427 tons of bombs (explosive, fire and napalm bombs). Two days later, on December 23, 700 tons of bombshell were dropped to the city. According to research by the local researcher Adolf Welter, at least 420 people died during these December attacks in Trier. Numerous buildings were damaged. On December 24, 1944 American B-26 attacked the Pfalzel Bridge. During the war, 1600 houses were completely destroyed. On the evening of March 1, 1945, the task force Richardson started towards Trier. A clear full moon night offered favourable visibility. Before midnight they reached the city. A surprised company with four armoured gunmen capitulated without a shot. Richardson divided his troops into two halves and sent them both to a Mosel bridge. The northern team found 'its' bridge blown up; The Kaiserbrücke team reported that the bridge (Roman bridge) - it had stood for almost 2000 years - was intact. Colonel Richardson drove himself in a tank to the bridge; Where his men were fired with light weapons from the other bank. He directed machine-gun fire from his tank to the other end of the bridge and ordered an infantry and an armoured group to advance across the bridge. When the infantrymen did so, a German major and five soldiers with burning detonators and an igniter ran toward the bridge but they were not able to explode. On March 2, 1945, the city fell into the hands of the Allies without heavy fighting.

The
Hauptmarkt, scene of street battles between Nazis and Communists, in
1935 and today with St. Gangolf church in the background.

On the Hauptmarkt is the Hauptwache, shown July 1941, and which served as Gestapo headquarters from 1933 to 1935.

In 1935 the Gestapo moved its offices here at the former Reichsbahngebäude at Christophstraße 1.

Simeonstraße in 1939 and today

Hitler's portrait on the Porta Nigra. Porta-Nigra-Platz became Adolf-Hitler-Platz in 1933

The usurpation by force of the leadership of the Reich Committee of the German Youth Associations (Reichsausschluß deutscher Jugendverbände) on April 5, 1933, the umbrella organization for all youth organisations in Germany, with a total membership of between 5 and 6 million young people, marked the beginning of Gleichschaltung of the political, religious, and youth movement–oriented youth organizations, their disbanding or forced transfer into the Hitler Youth. This led to a signicant increase in the Hitler Youth membership ranks and at the same time augmented the ranks of the league. The Hitler Youth continued to expand its sphere of power. For example, an agreement signed with the Reich sports leader (Reichssportführer) made it possible by 1936 to construct an organizational nexus, making any individual activity in sports dependent for all practical purposes on concomitant membership in the Hitler Youth. Similar agreements existed with the Reich Ministry for Nutrition (Reichsnährstand), the organization of National Socialist female students (Arbeitsgemeinschaft nationalsozialistischer Studentinnen, or ANSt), the National Socialist Welfare Organization (NSV), and the National Socialist Labour Organization (DAF). By binding more and more activities and interests to compulsory membership in the Hitler Youth, the net of inclusion became ever tighter and more closely meshed.

Dagmar Reese (32-33) Growing Up Female in Nazi Germany

In SichelstraßetheformerBishop-Korum-house served as a gaol forcollectingJewishwomenand childrenbeginning April1942.

A mountedplaque on the site commemoratesthis doleful event. At this pointwas1929-1931at the initiativeof the"MarianJünglingscongregation" (MJC), a Catholicyouth organisation,establishedthe so-calledBishop-Korum-house, which was demolished in the 1960s and replaced with the current building.From 1942it servedas a rallying pointof the femaleJewishprisonersprior to theirdeportation toconcentration campsLublin,TheresienstadtorAuschwitz. Of the more than400TrierJewswho were deportedto concentration campsbetween 1933 and 1945, only a few survived- some sources suggest 14, others 20 - and would returnto their hometown.

The Karl Marx House museum is where Karl Marx was born in 1818; it is
now a museum. The significance of the house went unnoticed until 1904,
at which point the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) worked hard
to buy it, succeeding in 1928. After the Nazis came to power the
building was confiscated and turned into a printing house. Here the
corpse of the first victim of the Nazis, Social Democrat Hermann
Möschel, was laid out in 1932. On March 8 1933 over an hundred SA and SS
men stormed the building, tore down the imperial flag replacing it with
the swastika flag drove out the Socialists. The Karl Marx House was
first occupied by the police then confiscated by the Nazi Party, and
finally, on May 4 1933 became the headquarters of their party newspaper
"Der Stürmer."

...some buildings still
physically in existence after 1933 also disappeared from tourist
literature. The Reich Committee for Tourism chastised the Trier Tourism
Office for distributing a brochure that alluded to the house in which
the ‘famous German Socialist Karl Marx was born’. The Committee
therefore ordered the immediate destruction of material making such
references to the ‘Marxist-liberalist past’

Semmens (60) Seeing Hitler's Germany

On
May 5, 1947 the building was opened as a museum of the life and works
of Karl Marx. On March 14, 1983, on the 100th anniversary of Marx's
death, the museum was re-opened after a year-long renovation that
expanded it to three floors where it now includes the history of
communism in the Soviet Union, China, Central and Eastern Europe.

The
Kaufhaus Haas. It had belonged to the Jewish owners of the fashion
house Sinn Leffers and was a main target of Trier Nazis. On May 13, 1933
Albert and Max Haas and his wife were taken into "protective custody."
The wife would hang herself and the men later taken to the town gaol. By
November 1938, all Jewish businesses were to be 'aryanised'.The Nazis' local group in Trier was founded in November 1925. In May 1930 there were only 150 members which rose to 800 in 1932. There had been increased interest from small and medium-sized businessmen. In 1931 about 35 per cent of Nazi members belonged to the middle class (merchants)." The Trier retailers had already founded a "trade and trade union" around 1900, in which the small and medium-sized shopkeepers opposed the supposed "growing pressure of the department stores" - which were mostly Jewish - under the motto "Our greatest enemy is the Department store ". The "National Socialist Handicrafts, Trade and Trade Organisation" (NS-Hago) In Trier on the 8th and 10th of March, 1933, individual Jewish shops were boycotted. On April 1, 1933, within the framework of the Reichsbundes Generalboykotts, two large Jewish department stores were occupied by Nazi brownshirts including the Kaufhaus Haas.Already one evening before, on March 31, leading Jewish personalities had been taken into so-called "protection" including lawyer Dr. Voremberg as well as Max and Albert Haas. The importance of Haas, founded in 1869, is reflected in the fact that the Reichsregierung allowed her in emergency years after the First World War to make emergency money. In 1929, more than 400 employees worked in the largest department store in the government district of Trier. After the Nazis had made a further step of escalation in April 1935, many "new" firms claimed that they were now "German shops": Schuhhaus Hans Klodt, formerly a Jewish business haul in Brotstrasse 44; The "Geschwister Schiefelbusch" took over the handicraft business A. Schapira (Ella and Max Goldstein) in Grabenstraße 16; Simon Reilinger's Jewish women's confectionery shop in Brotstraße 8/9 took over the "Geschwisterskanz"; From the Wollgeschäft Ernst Ermann in Fleischstraße 2 to 4 became "Geschwister Nees".

The
gaol on Windstraße.
From May 1940 it became the way station for at least 25 000
prisoners and resistance fighters from neighbouring occupied countries
Luxembourg, Belgium and France. According to conservative estimates at
least 200 were likely sentenced to death here. Across the road is the
Episcopal seminary where Klaus Barbie, the so-called 'Butcher of Lyons'
lived.

The
synagogue in 1944 and today. On the morning of November 10, 1938 it was
plundered and the interior destroyed. Twenty-three of the twenty-four
Torah scrolls were burned, and over an hundred Jewish men were arrested
that day and gaoled. The synagogue and an adjacent residential house
where the family of Chief Rabbi Dr. Altmann lived, were sold in 1939 and
by 1944 were completely destroyed by bombing .

The
Gasthaus "Zur Glocke" on Glockenstraße. It had been owned by a Nazi
activist and was a meeting place for them where they instigated attacks
on political opponents.

The Speyerer Tor from the south side at the turn of the century and today with lions added. The gate had been erected in in 1772/73 according to the plans of the Mannheim architect Nicolas de Pigage. Today it remains the last of its kind which is preserved in Rhineland-Palatinate. The damage shown in both images dates from 1794 when, on January 3, during the first coalition war, a battle between the French revolutionary troops attacking from the south and the Prussian army defending the city took place in front of the Speyer gate. The French were firing at Frankenthal with cannons of eight and a half pounds, and they also met the Speyer Gate, which still bears the necessary damage. Likewise, a shot from muskets has left damage still existing on the gate facade and in the inner passage. The city grew rapidly in the following century, so that the walls were largely removed until 1870 making the gates superfluous. In the Second World War both gates were damaged, but they were preserved and restored later. A graphic representation of the Speyer Gate is the logo of the city of Frankenthal.

Then and now; only the buildings at the far right provide historical continuity

The Römerbrücke, Germany's oldest standing bridge, on August 27, 1941 and today

Hitlerstraße is now Bahnhofstraße

Grabenstraße after the war and today and a memorial
for the ubiquitous "victims of National Socialism", so vague that it
could refer to practically to anyone and everyone.

Braubach

Before the war and the wife at the same spot 80 years later

A rumour had spread that Standartenführer Julius Uhl had planned to shoot Hitler on July 1, 1934 here at a concert of the singer Heinrich Schlusnus. Hitler himself referred to this in his July 13, 1934 speech to the Reichstag justifying his slaughter of his own men during the so-called Night of the Long Knives when he spoke of how

the man had already been hired in the meantime who was to carry out my elimination at a later date: Standartenführer Uhl, who confessed only a few hours before his death that he had been willing to carry out such an order.

Uhl in fact had been in Bad Wiessee when he was arrested on June 30 and taken to Stadelheim Prison. Apparently, "Uhl was chosen to play the leading role in Hitler’s concocted assassination plot due to his well-known prowess as a brilliant marksman" (Domarus, 496).

Bacharach

The wife again at Stahleck Castle overlooking the Rhine and as it appeared at the start of Nazi rule when this 12th-century fortified castle was completely rebuilt, providing 260 beds to the hostel using the site. The ceremonial laying of its foundation stone took place on 18 November 1934. The work, which took only 11 months, cost 25,000 reichsmarks and included addition of a kitchen, another Fachwerk building, on the south side. On 25 October 1935, the rebuilt building was officially dedicated. In the presence of members of the Hitler Jugend, the Deutsches Jungvolk, the Bund Deutscher Mädel, and both the SA and the SS, Gauleiter Gustav Simon gave the dedicatory address. Stahleck became one of 27 Jugendburgen (youth castles), to be used for indoctrination of teenagers and young adults. Between 1937 and early 1938, the turrets on the shield wall were built and its chemin de ronde roofed over. A visit by Rudolf Hess in June 1938 prompted the start of work to complete the rebuilding of the keep, which was still a ruined stump. The plan was to reconstruct it to a height of 36 metres and, 7 storeys, and name it the Rudolf Hess Tower. However, the existing foundations would not have been able to bear the weight, so the ruin was pulled down, and in November 1938, work began on a completely new tower on a smaller footprint. Work on this was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. From 1940 to 1942, the castle served as a military hospital. In addition, in November 1940, students from now occupied Luxembourg who had been studying at German and Austrian universities when the war began were forced to attend re-education classes there, and eventually a youth re-education camp was set up. Male schoolchildren and students from Esch-sur-Alzette and Echternach were interned at the castle for 4 months as punishment for protesting against the announcement in 1942 of the introduction of required military service in Luxembourg and the forced conscription associated with it, as well as for participating in the general strike which followed. (Girls were sent to a youth hostel at Adenau.) Those of military age were then sent to the front. There is a memorial plaque at the castle, and the State of Rhineland-Palatinate and the City of Bacharach have organised memorial events at which contemporary witnesses spoke. Beginning in January 1943, the castle was used as an internment camp for German youth who had shown insufficient loyalty to the Party, such as the founders of the Catholic youth resistance group the Michael Troop; some were taken from Stahleck to concentration camps. From June 1943 to summer 1944, it was a work and military training camp for Germans between 14 and 18 years of age.

National Socialism in the courtyard and the site today. On the right is a tin badge showing the castle at the top over the words “Jugendburg Stahleck” and “25 Jahre 1911
1936 Rhineland”. The central triangle reads “DJH”.

Rheinbrohl

The flag poles at the 29er Ehrenmal, a memorial to the 29th Infanterie-Regiments „von Horn“ (3. Rheinisches), are there, but the flags have since changed.

Schweigen-Rechtenbach (Rhineland-Palatinate)

The Weintor, built in the autumn of 1936, marks the start of the Weinstrasse in the south of the Palatinate, less than a mile from the French border. It had been created as part of an economic initiative by the National Socialist government in the 1930s. at a time when the wine industry in the Palatinate wine region was in crisis. A wine harvest more than twice as large as usual had caused prices to crash by 1934. Government policy had compounded the industry's difficulties by forbidding the business activities of Jewish wine traders, who had hitherto provided a vital commercial link for the wineries. Party leaders came up with the idea of the German Wine Route, with the imposing "Weintor" at its southern end, as a way to increase general awareness of the region's wineries and to boost employment in the tourism sector locally. The regional Gauleiter, Josef Bürckel, produced an appropriately bombastic speech on 19 October 1935 as part of the official opening of the German Wine Route. His speech was entitled "Kampf und Volk – Wein und Wahrheit“.

The "Weintor" was clearly visible from across the frontier, and the Gauleiter's speech contrasted the activist policy of the national government with the economic turmoil in nearby France, then experiencing, nationally, a particularly savage and destructive bout of industrial unrest and economic gloom. Press reports of the opening ceremony wrote of it as a form of "Weihe" (consecration). At this time the Weintor in Schweigen was a provisional timber structure. At Grünstadt, near the northern end of the "Wine Route" a second "Weintor", this one of Papier-mâché, had been erected. As part of the ceremony a column of 300 vehicles drove the length of the German Wine Route in convoy, from south to north, but not before a single engined airplane had flown its entire length. The stone-clad "Weintor" was finally built in 1936 after an architectural competition for its design was won by August Josef Peter and Karl Mittel from Landau. The foundation stone was laid on August 27, 1936, and less than two months later, on October 18, it was formally inaugurated. Citizens of Wissembourg, which since 1919 had been part of France, enjoyed the fine view on the north side of their town, of a large two-headed imperial eagle carved on one side of the "Weintor", clutching a huge swastika in its talons. In France this was seen as provocative. After the war ended, in 1945, the huge stone swastika was cut away.

Maikammer

Swastikas flying at the Kalmithaus (left) and Aussichtsturm (background) on the Southern Weinstraße

Frankenthal

In 1938 the Jewish synagogue, built in 1884, was burnt to the ground during the Reichskristallnacht. During the Second World War the prisoner of war prisoners XII B (short Stalag XII B) of the German military power consisted in Frankenthal. In 1940, a forced labour camp was operated for several months as an outside camp of the SS special camp Hinzert (concentration camp) in Mörsch, the prisoners of which were employed in the highway construction (today's A 6). On September 23 1943, Frankenthal was heavily destroyed by bombs and lost a large part of its older buildings. In
1945, at the end of the war, its industries in ruins, it was
occupied first by the Americans and then by the French by way of
ultimate humiliation. The city was rebuilt in the post-war period, like many others, in functional, but unadorned architecture.

The Frankenthaler Brauhauskeller, where Hitler stayed in April, 1931. On February 21, 1933 the Nazis organised a public meeting here, attended by 200 people, half of whom were women. Women participated in such a large number, because Tuesday evenings at the Brauhauskeller was always when the "knitting and Flickstunde" of the Nazi female members took place. That same evening supporters of the Christian Social Service (CSVD), a strongly Christian-Protestant-conservative party, gathered in the restaurant "Ax" on Speyerer Straße. According to the speaker, Professor Risch from Speyer, the cause of the economic crisis is the "removal of God from the acquisition and public life and the worship of mammon". The leader of the CSVD in Frankenthal was the well-known saddler and presbyter Jakob Schatz.

Unemployed in front of the municipal welfare office in the Horn's house on the market square, today's Erkenbert Museum. On July 1, 1929, the number of unemployed and their dependents in Frankenthal amounted to 1,726. 743 people were supported by the municipal welfare system. After the outbreak of the global economic crisis in October 1929, the situation intensified dramatically. On October 1, 1930, the number of unemployed and their dependents was already 4,688; In total, Frankenthal had 26,439 inhabitants in 1930. More than 26 percent of them were dependent on unemployment or welfare support.

Wormser Straße on May 1, 1933 and today, the Wormser Tor in the backgroundMarktplatz then and now

Idar-Oberstein

Despite being banned in all uses by the German government, the town still uses the Wolfsangel, symbol of the forbidden Jungen Front,
in its Nazi-era arms which were approved by the Oldenburg Ministry of
State for the Interior and have been used since 10 July 1934. At the Oldenburg Landtag elections in 1931, the NSDAP received more than 37% of the votes cast, but could not form the government. After the Nazis had first given up a declaration of tolerance for the existing government, they were then soon demanding that the Landtag be dissolved. Since this was not forthcoming, the Nazis filed suit for a referendum, and they got their way. This resulted in dissolution on 17 April 1932. In the ensuing new elections on 20 May, the Nazis won 48.38% of the popular vote, and thereby took 24 of the 46 seats in the Landtag, which gave them an absolute majority. In Idar, which was then still a self-governing town, the National Socialists received more than 70% of the votes cast. They could thereby already govern, at least in Oldenburg, with endorsement by the German National People's Party, which had two seats at its disposal, even before Adolf Hitler’s official seizure of power in 1933. One of the new government’s first initiatives was administrative reform for Oldenburg, which was followed on 27 April 1933 by the similar Gesetz zur Vereinfachung und Verbilligung der Verwaltung (“Law for simplifying administration and reducing its cost”) for the Landesteil of Birkenfeld. Through this new law, 18 formerly self-administering municipalities were amalgamated; this included the self-administering towns (having been granted town rights in 1865) of Idar and Oberstein, which were amalgamated with each other and also with the municipalities of Algenrodt and Tiefenstein to form the new town of Idar-Oberstein. The law foreshadowed what was to come: It would be applied within a few weeks, without further discussion or participation, to the exclusion of the public and against the will of municipalities, who had not even been asked whether they wanted it, to places such as Herrstein and Oberwörresbach, Rötsweiler and Nockenthal, or Hoppstädten and Weiersbach. The restructuring also afforded the Nazis an opportunity to get rid of some “undesirables”; under Kreisleiter (district leader) Wild from Idar, all significant public positions were held until Hitler’s downfall by Nazis. In 1937, on the basis of the Greater Hamburg Act, the Landesteil of Birkenfeld was dissolved and transferred together with the “Restkreis St. Wendel-Baumholder” to the Prussian district of Birkenfeld, a deed which put all of what are today Idar-Oberstein’s constituent communities in the same district. After the Second World War, along with the whole district, the town’s whole municipal area passed to the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Alzey

Another reichsadler in the Palatinate is this one, still allowed to grace the entrance of the Finanzamt. Hitler spoke in the town on June 14, 1932 during his presidential campaign.On Reichskristallnacht (9 November 1938), the Alzey synagogue was destroyed and the fittings were burnt in front of the building. The ruin was torn down in the 1950s. A rescued Torah scroll can nowadays be found in the museum. On 8 January 1945, in World War II, the town narrowly missed being destroyed when 36 Boeing B-17 bombers had been sent to take out a railway bridge in Alzey. Owing to bad weather and a landmark misinterpretation – the crew mistook the top of the old watchtower for the church steeple – the bombers ended up dropping their load on the Wartberg, a nearby hill, giving rise to the legend of the Wartbergturm – the old tower – as Alzey's saviour.

Mainz

In 1929 and today. After the Great War the French occupied Mainz between 1919 and 1930 according to the Treaty of Versailles which went into effect 28 June 1919. The Rhineland (in which Mainz is located) was to be a demilitarized zone until 1935 and the French garrison, representing the Triple Entente, was to stay until reparations were paid. In 1923 Mainz participated in the Rhineland separatist movement that proclaimed a republic in the Rhineland. It collapsed in 1924. The French withdrew on 30 June 1930. Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January, 1933 and his political opponents, especially those of the Social Democratic Party, were either incarcerated or murdered. Some were able to move away from Mainz in time. One was the political organizer for the SPD, Friedrich Kellner, who went to Laubach, where as the chief justice inspector of the district court he continued his opposition against the Nazis by recording their misdeeds in a 900-page diary.

In March, 1933, a detachment from the National Socialist Party in Worms brought the party to Mainz. They hoisted the swastika on all public buildings and began to denounce the Jewish population in the newspapers. In 1936 the forces of the Third Reich re-entered the Rhineland with a great fanfare, the first move of the Third Reich's meteoric expansion. The former Triple Entente took no action. During World War II the citadel at Mainz hosted the Oflag XII-B prisoner of war camp. The Bishop of Mainz, Albert Stohr, formed an organisation to help Jews escape from Germany.

During World War II, more than 30 air raids destroyed about 80 percent of the city's centre, including most of the historic buildings. Mainz was captured on 22 March 1945 against uneven German resistance (staunch in some sectors and weak in other parts of the city) by the 90th Infantry Division under William A. McNulty, a formation of the XII Corps under Third Army commanded by General George S. Patton, Jr.Patton used the ancient strategic gateway through Germania Superior to cross the Rhine south of Mainz, drive down the Danube towards Czechoslovakia and end the possibility of a Bavarian redoubt crossing the Alps in Austria when the war ended. With regard to the Roman road over which Patton attacked Trier, he said:

one could almost smell the coppery sweat and see the low dust clouds where those stark fighters moved forward into battle.

From 1945 to 1949, the city was part of the French zone of occupation. When the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate was founded on 30 August 1946 by the commander of the French army on the French occupation zone Marie Pierre Kœnig, Mainz became capital of the new state.[17] In 1962, the diarist, Friedrich Kellner, returned to spend his last years in Mainz. His life in Mainz, and the impact of his writings, is the subject of the Canadian documentary My Opposition: The Diaries of Friedrich Kellner. Following the withdrawal of French forces from Mainz, the United States Army Europe occupied the military bases in Mainz. Today USAREUR only occupies McCulley Barracks in Wackernheim and the Mainz Sand Dunes for training area. Mainz is home to the headquarters of the Bundeswehr's Wehrbereichskommando II and other units.The famous Weimar novelist Alfred Döblin reappeared in Germany in
French uniform and became a literary censor in Baden-Baden. By his
own testimony, towering piles of books were placed before him, written
either during the war or just after. Suppression had not done wonders for
German letters, he thought. With no pun intended (Günter Grass’s first
successful novel, The Tin Drum, was not published until 1959), he wrote,
‘At first the only thing that grew on the ground was grass and weeds.’ He
founded a literary journal, and formed part of the delegation that inaugurated the new University of Mainz. The journey to the inauguration ceremony was an adventure in itself. As they approached the cathedral city
they saw the wrecks of factories ‘as if brought down by an earthquake’ and
then the city centre: ‘But where was Mainz? All that one could see were
ruins, faceless people, twisted beams, empty façades: that was Mainz.’ In
the old barracks that was now the university Döblin watched civilians and
military figures leafing through the translated transcripts of the speeches
that morning. There were British and American uniforms scattered along
the rows. An orchestra struck up the overture from The Magic Flute. Men
came in wearing black gowns and mortar boards. Döblin was reminded of
a high-school graduation in the United States. The president of the region
gave a speech in which he described the new university as the key to the
material and cultural revival of the region.

MacDonogh (276-277) After the Reich- The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation

The main railway station

Schusterstrasse then and now

President Hindenberg in July 1930 at a swastika-bedecked Schillerplatz, the Befreiungsdenkmal now replaced with the Fastnachtsbrunnen. The statue itself, Benno Elkan's "Rhenania" (representing a Rhineland freed from French brutality) was destroyed by the Nazis because of the Jewish background of the artist in late March 1933. Elkan then fled Germany and emigrated to England, where he lived until his death in 1960. In gratitude to the British, Elkan created a large Menorah featuring scenes from the Passion of the Jewish people . As a gift of the British Parliament, it is now before the Knesset in Jerusalem.

When they took power, the Nazis destroyed the huge memorial to Gustav Stresemann at Fischtrplatz.

Hitler speaking at the fussballplatz June 13, 1932

The marktplatz before the war, September 1942, and today

The Eisenbahnbrücke 1942 and today

Annweiler am Trifels

Down the hauptstrasse then and now.

On the Sonnenberg behind lie the ruins of the castle of Trifels, in which Richard the Lionhearted was imprisoned from 31 March to 19 April 1193.

Neuwied (Rhineland-Palatinate)

Linking Weißenthurm and Neuwied over the Rhine, what is now known as
the Raiffeisenbrücke replaces the destroyed Hermann-Göring-Brücke. Linz am Rhein

In kreis Neuwied, the Rheintor at Burgplatz then and now, with a different flag flying. Paul Freiherr Eltz von Rübenach, who had served as Reich Minister of Postal Services and Transportation from 1932 to 1937, died in the town in 1943. After the Second World War, Linz became a part of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1946.

Coblenz

The Kaiser Wilhelm memorial with and without swastika. The monument was unveiled in the presence of William II on August 31, 1897. The semi-circular pediment with its 33 ft high hall of columns survived the last world war. The 46 ft high equestrian statue of Emperor William I in his parade uniform, followed by the female allegory of the Empire carrying the imperial crown of Germany on a velvet cushion, was destroyed in March 1945 by an artillery shell. In 1953 the monument was declared the Memorial to German unity by German president Theodor Heuss. The Germans remember the date since they sung their national anthem here for the first time on that occasion after the defeat in WW II. But the people of Coblenz wanted their ‘old Emperor William’ back. This was made possible by a generous private donation of 3 million marks (EUR1.53 million/$1.9 million) and a local fundraising effort in Coblenz which brought in 350,000 DM (EUR180,000). The heavy statue of 63.5 tonnes was unveiled to the public on 25 September 1993.After the Great War, France occupied the area once again. In defiance of the French, the German populace of the city has insisted on using the more German spelling of Coblenz since 1926. During World War II it was the location of the command of German Army Group B and like many other German cities, it was heavily bombed and rebuilt afterwards. Between 1947 and 1950, it served as the seat of government of Rhineland-Palatinate.

The Weindorf (wine village) of Koblenz was established in 1925 as part of the Reichsausstellung Deutscher Wein (The Reich German Wine Exhibition), held from 8 August to 13 September 1925 as part of the celebrations for the 1000th anniversary of the Rhineland. Koblenz was chosen as the venue because the city is in the centre of the wine trade and tourist area. Above shows the largest exhibition hall, the Fachwerkhaus (also called the Rheinhalle), which was located in the middle of the exhibition area. Originally built only for the duration of the exhibition, the buildings were so popular that they have been retained since as a tourist attraction. Newly-elected President Paul von Hindenburg sent at the opening on August 8, 1925 a congratulatory telegram. The devastating air raid on Koblenz on 6 November 1944, left the site in ruins and it was eventually rebuilt in the 1950s, albeit in simplified form.

Rheinzabern

Adolf Hitler Straße then and now

Ingelheim

Binger Straße in 1939 and today, under renovation. After the war, Ingelheim emerged as the only unscathed town between Mainz and Koblenz.

Demonstration outside the Burgkirche

Remagen

The Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen—the last standing on the Rhine—captured by soldiers of the U.S. 9th Armoured Division on March 7, 1945 during Operation Lumberjack. The Ludendorff Bridge was originally built during World War I as a means of moving troops and logistics west over the Rhine to reinforce the Western Front. The bridge was designed by Karl Wiener, an architect from Mannheim. It was 1,066 ft long, had a clearance of 49 ft above the normal water level of the Rhine, and its highest point measured 96.0 ft. The bridge was designed to be defended by troops with towers on each bank with machine gun slits in the towers. The bridge carried two railway tracks and a pedestrian walkway. During World War II, one track was planked over to allow vehicular traffic. During Operation Lumberjack, on 7 March 1945, troops of the U.S. Army's 9th Armoured Division reached the Ludendorff Bridge during the closing weeks of World War II and were very surprised to see that the railroad bridge was still standing. It was the last of 22 road and railroad bridges over the Rhine still standing after German defenders failed to demolish it. U.S. forces were able to capture the bridge. The unexpected availability of the first major crossing of the Rhine, Germany's last major natural barrier and line of defence, caused Allied high commander Dwight Eisenhower to alter his plans to end the war and possibly shortened the war in Europe. The ability to quickly establish a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Rhine and to get forces into Germany allowed the U.S. forces to envelop the German industrial area of the Ruhr more quickly than planned. The Allies were able to get six divisions across the bridge before it collapsed on 17 March 1945, ten days after it was captured. The collapse killed 18 U.S. Army Engineers.Hans Peter Kürten, at that time Mayor of Remagen, had long considered the idea of constructing a memorial. The negotiations with the German Federal Railway alone lasted seven years before the city could finally acquire the former railway property. Announcements sent to government officials concerning the intended preservation of the bridge towers and the construction of a Memorial to Peace stirred no interest. In the summer of 1976, it was necessary to remove the still intact bridge support pilings in the river. The mayor had the stones deposited on the Remagen river bank, with the idea in mind of selling small pieces of the bridge stones enclosed in synthetic resin and containing a certificate of authenticity. On 7 March 1978, he went public with his idea and achieved such an unexpected degree of success, that he had realised more than 100,000 DM in sales profits. There has not been another bridge built across the Rhine here, mainly due to opposition from the people of Remagen (and surrounding areas), contending that a bridge located at this point along the Rhine would spoil the view.

In his book Crimes and Mercies regarding allied brutality towards Germans after the war, James Bacque writes that

Much
concerning these atrocities has been deliberately suppressed, some has
been forgotten, some falsified, but perhaps the most poignant anecdote
was given by an ex-prisoner, Johannes Heising, who in the 1990s
published a book about his experiences in the US camp at Remagen. After
the book was published, Heising was talking in 1991 with another former
Remagen prisoner, Franz-Josef Plemper, who reminded him of something
Heising had not described in the book: one night, the Americans had
bulldozed living men under the earth in their foxholes. Plemper
described the scene to him: 'One night in April 1945, I was startled out
of my stupor in the rain and the mud by piercing screams and loud
groans. I jumped up and saw in the distance (about 30-50 meters) the
searchlight of a bulldozer. Then I saw this bulldozer moving forwards
through the crowd of prisoners who lay there. In the front it had a
blade making a pathway. How many of the prisoners were buried alive in
their earthholes I do not know. It was no longer possible to ascertain. I
heard clearly cries of "you murderer".' And then Heising remembered.

Schifferstadt

My bike on front of the hotel Salischerhof on Burgstraße where I stayed. A yard away on the road are these stolperstein acknowledging local Jews forced into exile to England and the United States; a couple appears to have had swastikas scratched onto their surface.

Beilstein

The Zehnthaus during the Third Reich and today. The municipality had been the setting for a number of Nazi-era films such as Carl Froelich’s 1936 work Wenn wir alle Engel wären (“If We Were All Angels”) starring Heinz Rühmann (described by Hull, 104, as "the best comedy of the year which contained a number of racy situations that would have curled the hair of an American censor) and the 1938 film Das Verlegenheitskind starring Ida Wüst and Paul Klinger.

The two memorials for fallen soldiers in the cemetery; the older, smaller monument to the Laubenheimer soldiers fallen during the Franco-Prussian War was originally on the market square but, under the Nazis, was moved here. The larger monument was erected for donations from the population and the local associations for the victims of the First World War and was consecrated on August 31, 1931, according to the log book of the warriors and soldiers comrades in Laubenheim on the Rhine "in a distinguished, worthy manner". The monument was built of limestone and bore on the front a panel with the names of the fallen. Above the table was the representation of a soldier's head with a steel helmet topped by a pyramid-shaped point with the Iron Cross. Under mayor Wilhelm Spies in 1960 it was covered with marble tiles. Instead of the nomenclature, a book with the names of the soldiers who had fallen in the two world wars and the Laubenheimer citizens who had been killed in the bomb attacks were inserted.

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